This message is aimed at you if you…:

• want to participate in the alternative media coverage of the biggest story in Minnesota in recent years, and…
• …are going to be somewhere near the convention, or, alternatively
• …you are going to be nowhere near the convention at all.

Here’s the deal: if you have a video cam, a still cam, or even just a cell phone, we want you to keep your eyes open. While some of them strenuously deny it, others among the protesters, out of adolescent posturing or out of malice, plan on trying to disrupt the convention and making life that week a very difficult for Twin Citians; “we want to make poeple in the Twin Cities understand what life’s like in Baghdad”, said my co-panelist on MPR’s “In The Loop” past year. We want to keep an eye on our city, so it looks the same as it did before they turned up. Which, if you live and pay taxes and send your kids to school here, should be a non-partisan thing.

So if you’re in the Twin Cities the week of the convention, here’s what we’d like you to do: Watch for:

• People gathering on off ramps or overpasses. Word has it that, since the venue itself is going to be pretty secure, they’re going to be aiming to shut down traffic to keep delegates from getting to the convention.
• People walking away from cars.
• People wearing green hats [they’re part of the ACLU legal team, and they can be expected at all protester “events”, looking for lawsuit fodder]
• Guys with purple armbands who have videos cameras.
• Piles of bikes. Bike thefts in the Twin Cities are way up in recent weeks; there’s evidence that “protest” groups are gathering bikes to use as cheap, traffic-proof transportation.
• Groups of people away from parade routes.
• Piles of stuff that could be used to block traffic.

With that in mind – as we get closer to the convention, we at True North will be publishing some contact information; if you see any of the above (and, in a perfect world, if you get pictures), we’ll be looking for your input.

Think about it.

More later.

…who has not the faintest clue about driving trucks or navigating Saint Paul, take a look at the route.

How many times can you say “Oh, My Gawd”.

• Squeezing semis around the corner of Annapolis and Smith? I don’t know if they’re pulling trailers or not, but even without a trailer…
• Squeezing hundreds of trucks across 7th at Smith? It’ll be like The Who at Riverfront Colisseum. And then…
• Up Summit Hill? Straight up the steepest road grade in the Twin Cities? Sure, the semis’ll make it, but it’s gonna sound like the Russians finally charged through the Fulda Gap with a thousand T72s! And then…
• A turn onto Dale at Summit? That is one narrow street, especially if they’re talking about hauling trailers.

Of course, I suppose anyone who could plan that could plan what Minnesoros Independent reporter Paul Schmelzer says they’re going to do (emphases added):

The drive will begin at 11 and make its way north through West St. Paul, crossing the Mississippi on the High Bridge at Smith Street. It’ll continue down Summit Avenue, north on Dale, east on University and then past the Capitol, before leaving on Robert Street — the closest the convoy will get to the RNC venue itself. By 4 pm, the truckers will join the “March for Our Lives” with the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, which starts at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at the United Nations, 45th Street and 1st Avenue.

Three hours to get to New York?

Formidable.

Paul Schmelzer at the Minnesoros “Independent” asks:

Which raises a question: If St. Paul police are still struggling to find enough officers to patrol the RNC, will there be enough cops to keep the peace in downtown Minneapolis, the myriad and likely far-flung RNC protests and neighborhoods, like North Minneapolis, that continue to grapple with summer crime?

Hm.  Good question.

Maybe if the Twin Cities’ left would do something to abjure and condemn the groups that are preparing to wreak mayhem in the Twin Cities, it’d be less of a problem?

Instead, say, of playing the coy peek-a-boo they’re playing with violent groups –  making solemn noises about wanting a peaceful week, but essentially doing anything possible to avoid condemning them?

Just a thought.

The ACLU and the St. Paul/Ramsey County authorities have duelling predictions about arrests at the RNC next month:

With thousands of protesters expected on the streets facing thousands of police officers, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is predicting that 800 people will be arrested during the week of the Republican National Convention and will have 75 lawyers on call to defend them.

The St. Paul police forecast far fewer arrests, but Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher indicated this week that the ACLU’s numbers may be in the ballpark.

Hm. Why would the ACLU predict so many more arrests than the cops? Perhaps because they want a melee publicity bonanza?

Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin said this week that she had heard those kinds of estimates. “I really don’t believe that it is going to reach 1,800, with the information I have now,” she said. “It could be closer to 800 and maybe less.”

She said that during the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, the number of people arrested was in the teens.

One reason for New York’s high arrest total was a decision by police to arrest a large number of people during one of the demonstrations. Most charges were later dropped. Gearin said she was hopeful that things will work differently here.

“The St. Paul police are telling us they will be doing things more thoughtfully than New York,” she said. “They are being trained to avoid some of the arrest situations.”

I am, if nothing else, generally confident in the Saint Paul Police.

Next Tuesday, with support from the ACLU, about three dozen lawyers will attend a continuing legal education course at the offices of Fredrikson & Byron law firm in Minneapolis for training on how to represent people arrested in demonstrations, said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota ACLU.

Must be all the lawyers released from helping defend civil liberties in the Heller case.

(Cough cough).

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said her office had developed a “tiered plan” to deal with arrested protesters. The first tier involves minimal felony arrests with only certain personnel assigned, she said.

“If the felony arrests go higher, we have a second tier approach, more volume and more attorneys,” she said.

Gaertner said that there is also “a third tier, where all heck breaks loose, with more lawyers involved in the charging.”

She added: “We are ready for everything.”

I see no mention of (checks list of leftybot paranoid predictions) Blackwater, attack dogs, water cannon or the military.

Around noonish yesterday I took advantage of the gorgeous day to buzz over to the Xcel Energy Center to take in the “Anti-War Committee”‘s press conference to announce their plans for the fourth and final day of the Republican National Convention.

We stood on the plaza at Seventh and Kellogg.  Construction workers with their yellow contractor badges taking a break from the big buildout inside the X wandered around, lunchpails and Subway wrappers in hand, taking (mostly) no interest at all in the proceedings.

I counted a total of seven reporters or camerapeople of various types (plus me, whatever it is that I am), seven people from the “Anti-War Committee”, three of whom spent the conference standing in the back of the camera shot holding a banner (and not all that successfully; one corner got away from one of the guys a couple of times), and a rather portly guy in cargo shorts with a consumer-grade video cam who hovered around the edge of the “conference” shooting footage of…the reporters, mostly. 

Three women from the AWC spoke – briefly.  Jesse Albertson-Grove – a dead-ringer for a younger Chelsea Clinton – noted that the Anti-War Committee “stood in solidarity” against US involvement in wars in Iraq, Palestine and Colombia.  I didn’t get to ask her if they advocated giving Ingrid Betancourt back to FARC.

Next, Katrina Plotz noted that Iraq wasn’t the only war – indeed, we have a “war at home”; as evidence of this war at home, she noted that candidate and presumptive nominee John McCain wants to…

…extend the Bush tax cuts. 

(Around this point a heckler – a lanky guy with a contractor badge, carrying his lunch box as he walked back to the X on Kellogg – yelled “Why don’t you go back to your own neighborhood?”  I don’t think he got any air time). 

 Misty Rowan – an auburn-haired woman in an AWC t-shirt who looked like Kelly O’Donnell’s younger, vegan, Prius-driving sister – added that the group’s plans include a march.  The Saint Paul Police had given them a permit to march from the Capitol to the X later in the afternoon on the Fourth; according to Rowan, the AWC was upset that the permit didn’t allow them to march into the X and throw garbage at delegates, or something (I’ll admit my attention was wandering around this point). 

Among ’em, they mentioned that the 9/4 march, timed to coincide with John McCain’s acceptance speech, is going to be “more militant” than the opening-day parade.

How much “more militant?”  And what does that mean?

Ms. Plotz took the microphone again. 

I asked her – given the number of left-leaning groups who are talking about blockading streets, damaging property and attacking delegates, did the “Anti-War Committee” specifically condemn or abjure violence?

MPR was there.  Bob Collins noted the conference on NewsCut yesterday.

What about what most people think when they hear a term like militant, violence, for example?

“The violence that I’m worried about is the violence that’s being carried out in Iraq right now,” she answered, which isn’t really an answer.

“You’re not answering my question,” a blogger said, uttering the five words that mark a great political journalist.

“I know,” she said, adding that she doesn’t consider the blockades being planned — allegedly — by other groups “violence.”

“That’s not what we’re planning,” she said.

Collins notes the game of rhetorical peek-a-boo as some of the other reporters followed up with Plotz:

“We worked very hard to make the Day 1 march on the Xcel something that you can bring your family to and you can all come out for the war. And we believe Day 4 is for the truly committed and for the people who really want to see change and expect that to be a little harder to come to than just showing up with the kids and the balloons.” (Listen)

Collins:

That sounds almost militant. Perhaps, too militant, because the other speaker jumped in to spin that answer…

“If people are wondering about Day 4, is it going to be safe, is it going to be OK to bring their families, we would say ‘yes.’ I think the more the better.”

A few minutes later, however, she said militant might mean that “people face a little more risk by coming down.” (Listen)

Also – whenever “violence” was mentioned, all the speakers took pains to note that the violence they feared the most was from the police.

After saying there wouldn’t be any “sit-ins” or “die-ins,” that led us back to the question of how the second protest is more militant than the first? “I would say if people have questions, they should get in contact with us,” she said.

Hello?

She said people should go to an organizing committee meeting to find out what the protest is going to look like.

Hmmm.

As the conference broke up, a woman with the AWC asked me for my card.  She said she wanted to read what I wrote about the event.

After six and a half years of blogging, I still don’t have cards.  I wrote down my URLs (for Shot in the Dark and True North).

I presume she’s interested in checking out the fairness of my coverage. 

In the spirit of the event, let me say that the only unfairness I am worried about is in Zimbabwe.

In Denver, they’re getting concerned about the “anarchists” and their plans for the Democratic National Convention.

A draft law proposed by the Denver Police Department would ban the possession by protesters of materials such as weighted pipes and chains and items that can make urine and feces bombs.

Police say that such materials are potentially dangerous. The City Council Safety Committee will review the proposal July 23.

If you make poop bombs illegal, then only criminals will have poop bombs.

Well, hang on.  Are we to assume that the Denver Police…:

a) …are paranoid?

b) …have been sniffing butane?

c) …employ Ryan Rhodes?

What could possibly prompt them to do this?

LaCabe, who oversees the police department, said the proposed ordinance requires authorities, before they make an arrest, to find an intent to use the material to obstruct the public’s right to move freely.

“We certainly don’t want to interfere with anyone’s First Amendment rights and the right to be heard,” [Denver’s Safety Manager Al] LaCabe said. “But it has to be done in such a way that it does not obstruct or endanger the general public or the police department.”…The proposed ordinance would ban material, such as weighted pipe and chains, to fashion what are known as “sleeping dragons.” Protesters have chained themselves to such devices at other protests to make it difficult for police to arrest and remove them.

I thought, briefly, about checking with the various metro jurisdictions to see if perhaps there were already any poop-bomb control ordinances…

…but then I realized, why bother?  While I have in the past wondered if I should take the claims by some of the protest organizers that they want to “shut down the convention” and “make the people of Saint Paul know what the people of Baghdad feel like” seriously, Scottsdale Woman of Fired O’Glake says that’s just silly, and it’s all gonna be OK!

Except for Protest Warrior, who are thugs who smash everything in their path.  Natch.

The Minnesoros Monitor “Independent” notes the various demonstration permits that’ve been issued for the upcoming Republican National Convention.

This one was interesting:

True Blue Minnesota was among the lottery winners. The group plans to stage anti-RNC events at Triangle Park on each day of the convention. According to Andrew Hine, one of the principal organizers of the gathering, they intend to utilize a 20×27 foot television screen to communicate their message. “It’s part digital billboard and part drive-in movie theater,” Hine says.

We have a preview of True Blue Minnesota’s video screen right here:

And here, the crowd, in their True Blue uniforms:

It’ll be a fun convention!

(What? You think I’m overestimating the tendency of lefties to think like a mindless herd? Sadly, no.)

(UPDATE:  I mean, No!  Really, Really No!)

For the past year or so, we’ve been noting the plans of some on the radical fringe left to not only disrupt the Republican National Convention, but to disrupt life in the Twin Cities itself.

Most troubling were the threats in some quarters to actually harass convention delegates, not merely in downtown Saint Paul in and around the convention itself, but back at their hotels.

I’m willing to write 90-99% of these sorts of things off to arrested-adolescent posturing by the sort of narcissistic, self-adulating fops that are drawn to this sort of fringe politics (every “anarchist” I’ve ever known in my life, and I’ve known quite a few, hailed from an upper-middle-class background; most were, at the end of the day, trying to get back at Mumsy and Dadders for being successful bourgeoisie.  I know there must be exceptions – but damned if I can say I’ve met any).

Who’s left?

I dunno – but someone’s looking out for ’em:

The imminent arrival of the Republican National Convention sent Minnesota’s three biggest metro-area cities scrambling to pass new regulations concerning the unprecedented number of street protests they’re anticipating. St. Paul’s existing ordinance requiring permits for public assemblies provided a model for the language approved May 19 by City Council members in Bloomington (PDF, see 5.4C), home to the Mall of America and oodles of hotel rooms where many convention-goers will stay.

Look – if you want to protest the RNC, or the party, or what it stands for, go for it.  And we’ll be watching.

But I have to ask – why the targeting of delegates at their hotels?

Hey, Chris Steller/Andy Birkey/Paul Schmelzer; if this were a Planned Parenthood convention, and pro-lifers were planning to harass conventioneers at their hotels outside of convention hours, are you trying to tell me you’d not be demanding the National Guard be called in?